How Congresswoman Barbara Lee Tried to Save the Oakland Athletics

After 57 years, the Athletics’ time in Oakland has been shortened to three days. The final home series begins Tuesday.

The A’s are moving: briefly to Sacramento, then to Las Vegas. Thursday’s sold-out finale is the final answer to Oakland fans’ plaintive cry: Is there anyone who can stop this move?

No, but Congresswoman Barbara Lee tried.

Fifteen months ago, the day before Nevada lawmakers approved $380 million in public funding for a new stadium in Las Vegas, Lee filed a bill in Congress aimed at keeping the A’s from moving — or at least imposing an exit fee high enough that the team might want to think twice about leaving.

Lee, a longtime congresswoman from Oakland, even included a conscious reference to A’s story in her effort. She called her bill the “Moneyball Act.”

That was a one day message. After that nothing happened with the bill. On Monday I spoke with Lee about why.

When someone in Congress is unhappy with Major League Baseball, the response is predictable: call in the media, issue a very public threat to repeal the sport’s cherished antitrust exemption, challenge Rob Manfred. Because who gets mad when Manfred, the commissioner, is portrayed as the bad guy? Holding owners accountable is basically Manfred’s job description.

Bernie Sanders, who is as liberal as you can get in Congress, threatened to fire him over the league killing 43 minor league teams. Ted Cruz, who is as conservative as you can get in Congress, threatened to fire him over the league moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta after Georgia passed laws that critics said amounted to voter suppression.

Nothing has happened in any way. If something gets too serious, the league sends in its lobbyists. Since 1950, according to Indiana University professor Nathaniel Grow, Congress has held over 60 auditions to debate MLB’s antitrust exemption without ever repealing it.

So Lee proposed this: MLB teams love to tout the economic impact they have on their communities, many of which have poured taxpayer money into building a stadium. So any team that moves out of town would have to pay back to its community an amount equal to the state and local taxes it paid over the past 10 years.

If the team failed to pay, the league would lose its antitrust exemption.

“That’s fair,” Lee said. “That’s the only fair way to do it. You have to compensate the community because the community has invested a hell of a lot.”

Lee said she had no idea how much the A’s might have to pay. She said the idea was to legalize a framework, not a formula, because state and local taxes vary by community.

“We didn’t have any specific idea of ​​what the money would look like,” she said. “We haven’t gotten that far. That would have to be determined by local jurisdictions.”

Lee was optimistic about winning support in Washington, even if she couldn’t tell another legislator what the financial impact of her bill might be. After all, the community could lose a team, regardless of whether its representative is a Democrat or a Republican, and teams other than the A’s have made noises about potential moves.

The first step toward passage of her bill was to be a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.

Ohio has two small-market MLB teams — the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Guardians — and Cleveland’s NFL team once moved to Baltimore. But Jordan neither co-sponsored Lee’s bill nor allowed the committee hearing required for passage of the bill.

I asked Jordan’s spokeswoman if she would support the bill; the spokeswoman said she would check but did not respond. But out of 434 other House members, Lee found only four who would cosponsor the bill. The more cosponsors you have, the more likely the bill is to pass.

“Finding co-sponsors also requires an outside strategy, outside activists or people with money to push things forward, or an organized effort,” Lee said. “There was no organized outside effort at all. We would have to build that support.”

To provide this type of support, you typically need an organization with an established reputation, experience, logistics and financing.

But why couldn’t Lee mobilize the A’s fan base that donated to the Nevada teachers union that tried to stop public funding for the Las Vegas stadium, organize creative and massive protests in Oakland, and flood Lee’s office with phone calls?

“When people hear about it at the grassroots level, at the community level, they like it, but it takes a hell of a lot of organization,” Lee said. “I don’t think they’re organized for a national effort.”

To be clear, given the partisan dysfunction in Washington, the outcome might not have been different even with a well-organized and well-funded nationwide effort.

Lee tried. The A’s are finished anyway.

Does one of the most powerful Americans, a member of Congress for 26 years, feel powerless?

“No, no, no,” Lee said. “I’ve lost a lot. But I’ve won a lot, too. I don’t feel helpless or hopeless. We put up a valiant fight. The city put up a valiant fight, the county, everyone.

“Unfortunately, we’re losing a team that really, at the time, was an example of black excellence in Oakland. This is more than just a team leaving. It’s part of Oakland’s history and our culture.”

Thursday is the end. I asked Lee how she felt about it and she listed the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. So I asked her what stage she was in.

“Not a trace of acceptance,” she said, “that’s for sure.”